After being excited on the back of Marco Torres awesome presentation at the 2005 AIS ICT Integrators’ Conference last week I decided to explore more global e-learning literature.
Last week’s EdTech Brainstorm #3 (grab the podcast file here) provides a really interesting discussion of Learning Objects - and really highlights that a lot of people really don’t have a clue about LOs at all! The guys at EdTech also provide an interesting comparison of two Learning Management Systems (LMS) - Moodle and Elgg. Elgg is apparently heavily blog-based… a more "organic" structure to Moodle (which I heavily use at the moment).

This perhaps leads to an interesting discussion about the extent to which so-called *structured* LMSes overly structure the learning environment. Are systems like Moodle (and commercial alternatives like WebCT and Blackboard) constraing the learning and interactions between students??? Similar issues will no-doubt arise soon with regard to the extent to which we are able to protect the online lives of our students - particularly from each other. Will our eagerness to allow students freedom to express themselves and reflect on their learning through blogs also provide unmitigated opportunities for electronic bullying??? Will the necessary monitoring that we must provide actually mean that students aren’t interested in blogging at school???